


Gifts

by Go0se



Category: Umbrella Academy
Genre: Blood, Drug Use, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Ghosts, Mentioned Character Death, Mentions of miscarriage, author's first post on a new site weeew, briefly described gore, like woah, mothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-21
Updated: 2012-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-10 10:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/pseuds/Go0se
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She comes to him on his birthday, which he guess makes sense; it'd be the same day she'd died, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gifts

Pogo had set up a cake for him in the dining room, sixteen candles and all; but as Allison was being more of a bitch than usual, Diego was out somewhere with Vanya again, Mom was undergoing maintenance, Ben was having a bad day with the monsters, and Number One was in some kind of pretentious-prick contest with the old man Hargreeves himself... no. Klaus had thanked Pogo but elected to stay the fuck out of that nonsense.  
He wasn't upset. It wasn't like they were actually a family or anything, he didn't expect them to act like it anymore. Besides, he had some important work to do by himself in his room. It involved as many hallucinogenics as he could get his recently-tattooed hands on and some old-time rock and roll.

After he lit up the weed turned out to be okay, but not good. Damn. He didn't even remember who he bought it off of. Waste not want not, though. He'd smoked a bowl or three and gotten pretty relaxed. He put the pipe down to move onto the acid tabs, and it was then he'd caught sight of the strange woman at the foot of his bed.

  
There wasn't a big deal, no howling winds or suddenly homicidal objects or anything. She was just standing there, staring at him; in her early fourty's maybe, her hair loose, wearing a sensible blouse and sensibly short skirt that was wet-looking and dark around the line of her hips. Her legs were bare. There was a smear of red on the inside of her thigh, and trickles of blood ran down her leg.  
Klaus froze, the pipe and lighter still in his hands. But then the woman stepped forward, and he relaxed. The blood dripping off her wasn't making any marks on the carpet, not one drop, and her feet didn't make a sound. A ghost. He knew how to deal with ghosts.

She walked right up to the bed and then through it, like it was water, until her legs weren't visible from the knee down and she was an arms-length away from him. She was prettier up close; there was something familiar about the set of her face. She looked lost.  
“Heya,” Klaus said, raising his right hand. ('HELLO', it read. 'GOODBYE' was tattooed on his opposite palm, his skin still healing scabby and gross underneath. Plain black ink, Ouija board lettering. It was a cheap joke, but those were his favourite kind.) He smiled winningly. “How are you today, ma'am?”  
“You're alive,” she said. Her voice had the same whisper-tightened edge that all departed voices did, but he thought underneath that she might have an accent. Somewhere European.  
Klaus nodded. “That I am,” he said, giving her a little wave. “Flesh and blood and bone, all right here.”  
Her phantom eyes filled with phantom tears. For a few seconds, her mouth moved but Klaus couldn't hear anything except for a soft wail (radio static; it happened sometimes), and then her words came through: “My son.”

Klaus dropped his hand and his smile abruptly. Shit, he thought. Of all the days to pick up a wandering closure-needer, and he hadn't even left his room. “Sorry, ma'am, nope,” he replied. “No son here. No one but us chickens. Well, and Space.”

The woman shook her head slowly, not used to the movement. When she reached out her hand it was shaking, even though she couldn't have been frightened or cold. She cupped Klaus' cheek. “My son,” she said again. She started to cry, making no sound. “I-- it's your birthday.”

The pipe and lighter landed on the carpet with a soft thump. He couldn't feel the spirit's hand on his face but he jerked back anyway, catching himself mid-air so he didn't fall off the edge of his bed. The pleasant buzz he'd built up from the smoke was almost entirely gone. A waste on top of everything else, but-- “What?”  
Her smile was shaky as her still out-stretched hand. “You were so small,” she barely said. “Even brand new, you were so pale... so quiet, and I could barely lift you. Your skin was so cold.” Tears slid down her cheeks and evaporated. “I thought you were dying.” The blood was still dripping from under her skirt, thick and fast, leaving no trace on the the bed.

He'd seen this sort of thing before. Once last week on a trip downtown, some dead guy walking with a gaping wound in his throat, invisible to anyone else. And a few years ago, when Luther-- when Number One had had his accident and Hargreeves had pulled off his goddamn experiment, and they were all in the hospital to see their supposed brother. Klaus gone wandering on the lower floors where the giant freezers were hidden from the public. Scores of ghosts, all bearing some kind of mark of their death, walked around trying to speak to someone.  
None of them had come up and tried to touch him, though. Certainly none of them knew his birthday. This woman was bleeding so much, she'd either had a late-term miscarriage or some kind of botched abortion, or-- or a sudden, violent wrench of a birth.  
Klaus swallowed. He'd read all of the media blitz bullshit that had surrounded him and his siblings' (step-siblings, house sharers) births, but if she'd actually been there, if it had happened to her... it'd be worth it to talk to her. Even if this was some kind of horrible trick Hargreeves was pulling.  
Although, it didn't feel like a trick. Try as the old bat might, and he did, Hargreeves could never successfully syphon Klaus' powers away from him for long, and he couldn't create fake ghosts. Klaus would know. Which meant that this woman was for real. Maybe she could give him some answers.  
That, and he didn't want to think about it much, but this was, or at least might be, his mother. His actual mother, who gave birth to him and seemed like... like she cared about him. She just didn't have enough time to care about him in. Maybe.  
  
Despite himself, he floated a bit closer.  “Did you know my father?” He asked.  
“An engineer,” she answered. “His name was---”  
“No,” Klaus interrupted, waving his hand a little impatiently. “I meant, Hargreeves? Did you know Hargreeves? Before...” He stopped. Before you died? That was a little harsh. Ghosts generally had delicate feelings, and he didn't want her to disappear.  
Still, she seemed to understand the implication. She frowned for the first time, confused. “Grieves? I... he invented things, didn't he?”  
  
The small hope went out, and Klaus sank down onto the bed. “Damn,” he muttered, rubbing his face.  
There was a sound like rain hissing through air. He looked up.  
The woman was close to him again, looking like she might have been sighing; cradling his face like he was something precious to her. It was a weird feeling, to have someone look at him like that.  
“Yeah?” He said. (The spirits rarely went away if he ignored them.)  
“What did they name you?” She asked, her wistfulness like leaves scratching along a sidewalk.  
“Numbe-- I mean, Klaus,” he answered.  
Her expression tightened, and after a second the tears came again. But she still smiled, just a tiny quirk of her mouth, vapour falling from her eyes. “That's a good name,” she nodded.

  
“... what would you have called me?” Klaus asked the ghost. He wasn't sure what made him ask, nor what was keeping him from pulling back from the woman's hands. Maybe the weed was stronger than he'd given it credit for.  
She paused for a long time. Her form was fading in and out, too. He wasn't sure she was going to say anything at all, but then- “It doesn't matter,” she answered finally. He had to lean forward to hear her, she was really just about gone. “Klaus is a good name.”  
Klaus nodded slowly. Then, equally as slowly, he raised his left palm and took her hand.  
  


-

**Author's Note:**

> (She found him specifically on his sixteenth birthday because of reasons.)


End file.
